Up the Rigor! Challenge the students! Make them think! You’ve probably heard these from time to time. As great as this is to say, sometimes it can be hard for teachers to come up with new ways to question their students. Enter The Max Ray Blog. Max posted a great blog post: 26 Questions You Can Ask Instead. Max gives great examples of ways teachers can up the quality of the questioning in their classroom.
Below is the list of questions from his post. Feel free to check out his post. There are even more questions in the comment section from other teachers who are adding to his list! Happy Questioning!
What do you notice about ______?
What are you wondering?
What’s going on in this ______?
What’s making this hard?
On a scale of 1-10, how easy is this for you? How come?
What’s one thing you remember about ______?
Here are three different ______. Which do you like best? What’s one thing you liked about it?
Tell me one thing you thought about problem three.
What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you see this?
What’s the fourth thing that pops into your mind when you see this?
What do you think a mathematician might notice about this?
If you saw this image/story/statement on a math quiz, what question(s) might go with it?
If your math fairy godmother appeared right now and offered to give you one helpful hint, what would you ask her for?
How confident are you in the work you’ve done so far?
The answer to the problem you’re about to work on is ______. How could someone have figured that out?
Have you ever had an experience like the one in the story?
What do you think the person in the story might be feeling?
Why do you think I showed you this?
What’s one thing you like about what she just said?
What’s one thing you’re wondering about what he just said?
What’s your best guess for the answer to this problem?
What is an answer that is definitely wrong for this problem?
Make a prediction. What do you think will happen…
Without writing anything down or calculating or thinking too hard, could ______ be the answer?
What’s your gut feeling?
Do you have a reason or a gut feeling (or both)?
